I haven't Used photoshop in over 4 years I have grown attached to GIMP. Why should I buy Photoshop? Personally I rather not but professionally It seems I must.. Also at the moment with the baby that is due any day now I cant afford to spend that kind of money. but sway me, how much has it changend since cs3?

I haven't Used photoshop in over 4 years I have grown attached to GIMP. Why should I buy Photoshop? Personally I rather not but professionally It seems I must.. Also at the moment with the baby that is due any day now I cant afford to spend that kind of money. but sway me, how much has it changend since cs3?

I'm sure there are lots of slick features since CS3, but if you're comfortable with GIMP and are able to produce professional-quality work in it, you should stick with GIMP. I've tried both and found Photoshop to be a little more efficient (as much as a bloated Adobe app can be ) but being a good designer isn't about the tools, it's about a mastery of the fundamentals.

being a good designer isn't about the tools, it's about a mastery of the fundamentals.

Thats how I feel but all the local design firm frown on gimp because they don't use it and if you don't use their tools they don't use you. IMO its stupid because I currently can produce a better product in GIMP. Also 90% of the work the local designers do is flash based with no mobile fall back...

Forget it for print (it doesn't run at 300dpi) - but download the demo and give it a try.

Much less bloated and much better workflow than Photoshop IMHO for web design. It has some crazy workflow features that you might find very interesting.

It's only ï¿½270 as opposed to the ï¿½600 for Photoshop.

If you're going to do stuff for print however, you're gonna need PS or Illustrator or whatever.

Can gimp run at 300dpi? Not tried it enough yet...if it does then Fireworks for web design and mock up, and Gimp for print stuff.

Only thing is with Photoshop - for some strange reason, it's still the industry standard for web design so sometimes that forces your hadn into buying it if you're going to be working in a chain of other people that use it.

You can export between FW and PS and flick between the two with (mostly) accuracy. You may notice a few anomalies that you have to iron out here and there.

I'm a born again Fireworker as of late. Still use PS when needed but now I'm getting used to FW, don't know how I lived without it for web design.

It's certainly not perfect (neither is Photoshop) , but google "Fireworks vs Photoshop for web design" to get a feel of the kind of things it offers.

Trouble is, just like me up until recently, most people don't bother with it, thinking it's some kind of "cheap" bad quality copy of Photoshop. Oce you start mucking around with it, you discover that it is in fact a completely different application geared towards different things, and takes care of a lot of those things that are very clumsy to do in Photoshop.

I think once Gimp gets CMYK then this will make it a very strong program.

Trouble is, just like me up until recently, most people don't bother with it, thinking it's some kind of "cheap" bad quality copy of Photoshop. Oce you start mucking around with it, you discover that it is in fact a completely different application geared towards different things, and takes care of a lot of those things that are very clumsy to do in Photoshop.

...because it was built from the ground up for web design. Smartest purchase Adobe ever made was Macromedia, purely for Fireworks' sake, now that Coldfusion has gone the way of the dodo and Flash isn't far behind.

...because it was built from the ground up for web design. Smartest purchase Adobe ever made was Macromedia, purely for Fireworks' sake, now that Coldfusion has gone the way of the dodo and Flash isn't far behind.

Exactly, my man, exactly. Well said. I guess in all the Photoshop hype, Fireworks kind of got shunted to the back of the queue and forgotten about. It's not even an obvious product on the Adobe site, the Fireworks icons are not always on full display like PS and Illustrator.

Edit - funnily enough, I notice on this site, Ben has it different - the Fireworks icon is the most prominent

I currently use fireworks cs3 for my web stuff. I found PS and the GIMP unnessarily complicated to use, fireworks is a lot more intuative and easier to pick up. As has been said FW was designed from the ground up for web work. Apparantly though Adobe have differnt ideas about it. I was at the Adobe CS3 launch seminar and the guy leading the presentation asked what the audience used for knock ups and concepts, I replied "Fireworks" and the guy looked shocked and only said "Really? Interesting".

Macromedia, purely for Fireworks' sake, now that Coldfusion has gone the way of the dodo and Flash isn't far behind.

ADobe doesn't support Coldfusion anymore?! Ha well I don't use it although my web design teacher taught my a good bit of it. I still prefer PHP. I used fireworks In my first Web design class I took in high school but Macromedia still owned it and I never got that into it. I never was a fan of photoshop. Anyone use Fireworks on linux how well does it work with Wine or what ever you use to run it?

Now I know Inkscape and Open Office Drawl support Vecters but I have never used either Inkscape looks less intrusive than gimp can be from time to time but again I have never tried theses and I am getting a little off topic. I really think for now I am going to stick with gimp.

...because it was built from the ground up for web design. Smartest purchase Adobe ever made was Macromedia, purely for Fireworks' sake, now that Coldfusion has gone the way of the dodo and Flash isn't far behind.

Coldfusion is still around, our company develops in CF.

CF 10 is currently in beta, there is still a very active community just no where near as much as .NET and PHP.

To be honest I prefer the smaller CF community, the support and help you get is unbelievable at times. You also don't get the usual buggy PHP code produced by some 12yr old from India in his bedroom.

Back on topic. I tried GIMP a few times when I was using Ubuntu and couldn't get on with it. I'm so used to PS that it would have a massive impact on my workflow to switch.

I say to go with what you are the most comfortable with, by the sounds of it Gimp. I’m a mom so I know the expenses that come along with a new baby and understand the hesitance to shell out big bucks for something you’re unsure of anyway. Personally I’m a Photoshop girl, but then I grew up with it and when I took Computer Graphics classes in high school it was what we had to use. So I’m just more comfortable with it.